Vendors exhibiting at an international money laundering conference in Miami have been demonstrating solutions for meeting tighter compliance rules for the detection and monitoring of suspicious accounts.
HNC Software is showcasing an upgraded version of its Risk Manager for Money Laundering product, including monitoring and filtering capabilities for correspondent banking activities and bank employee actions.
Financial institutions will be able to use the software to identify correspondent banks whose transactional and account activities (such as identification of account beneficiaries) vary significantly from that of other correspondent banks, says the vendor, and therefore focus their investigative resources on those banks most likely to have suspect or fraudulent dealings.
In addition, the updated system allows financial institutions to compare key statistics by employee or branch to identify possible money laundering collusion. It also can help identify the need for increased training of employees who fall short of the money laundering detection and investigative skills and reporting practices required by law.
Seperately, NetEconomy, which is demonstrating a refined version of its Erase product family at the Miami conference, has announced a partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the Netherlands to combine software delivery with expert consultancy, auditing, risk analysis, and implementation services.
Aart Bloemheuvel, director at PwC, The Netherlands, says: "We chose NetEconomy to be one of our partners within our anti-money laundering services because their family of risk management software offers a superior methodology for on-going transaction monitoring - the key to and effective KYC (know your customer) policy."
Also on show is SearchSpace and its strategic partner IBM which claims to offer the only enterprise-wide packaged solution for financial firms via its AML product.
The International Monetary Fund estimates money laundering ranges from two to five per cent of the world's gross domestic product. Estimates by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) place money laundering activities between $590 billion and $1.5 trillion.
The USA Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism), which passed into law in October 2001, provides a number of new anti-money laundering provisions required by financial institutions in identifying funds gained through illicit means. The Patriot Act also raises the maximum penalties for violations of the regulations from $100,000 to $1 million.